Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (LAAF), the UK’s longest running annual festival of Arab arts and culture, and returns for its 24th year this July.
Founded in 1998, LAAF exists to support and champion creatives from across the Arab region and its diaspora, in the belief that art and creativity have the power to express a shared humanity.
The festival – recently nominated in the LCR Culture & Creativity Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Culture – also celebrates Liverpool’s unique identity; a city, with a global community and brimming with artistry, that looks outwards across the world and welcomes and accepts all who arrive within it.
This year’s theme is HOME, unfolding across a diverse range of disciplines, including music, theatre and performance, visual art, literature and film – with the festival programme culminating at the ever-popular LAAF Family Day.
LAAF 2026 will provide a platform for artists and audiences to explore the many meanings of “home”: whether rooted in place and territory, shaped through family and relationships, or carried through memory, movement, environment, and social or geographic experience.
Liverpool Arab Arts Festival 2026 Programme of Events
Yemeni Night feat. The Al-Awhadel Band LIVE, St George’s Hall Concert Room (17 July)
Centred on the evocative sounds of the oud, the band is led by Yaser Awdhali, an artist and composer from Aden, Yemen. He began his artistic career in childhood, learning to play the oud at a young age, influenced by his father, the great artist Ahmed Omar Awdhali who had a long and well-known career in the Gulf states.
Now Yaser himself has earned the title ‘Artist of the Diaspora!’
Age suitability – 14+ (all under 18s to be accompanied by parent / guardian)
Sudanese Culinary Arts and Literature, The Black-E (18 July)
This event explores the meaning of home through food, art and storytelling, in collaboration with London-based publisher Almas Art Foundation. Centred on the work of British-Sudanese food archivist Omer Al Tijani, the event brings together recipes, oral histories, and cultural narratives that preserve Sudan’s heritage.
Age suitability – 14+ For guardians of any under 18s, please be aware of the content warning below.
Content warning – the discussion may bring up references to war, genocide, displacement, death, destruction of property, starvation, and sexual assault, as well as starvation and SA as weapons of war. These will only be mentioned if asked about.
40 Days and 40 Nights: Script in Hand Reading, Liverpool’s Royal Court Studio (18 July)
40 Days and 40 Nights is a brand new comedy inspired by the true story of the El Gadhy family from Bootle, who travelled by bright red double decker bus to Yemen in 1996 for the opening of their new family home.
As the family journeys across Europe and the Middle East, they navigate mishaps, family tensions and questions of identity, exploring what it means to be Muslim, Yemeni and Scouse. Filled with humour, heart and unforgettable characters, it’s a road trip like no other.
Developed as a collaboration between Liverpool’s Royal Court and Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, this script-in-hand reading offers audiences a first look at this exciting new production.
Age Rating: 14+
A Journey Home: Family Screening and Workshop, Plaza Community Cinema (19 July)
A screening of four short animated films centred around the theme of home, told through the perspectives of young characters. This will be followed by a creative workshop.
Suitability – all, with parental guidance.
Content warning – Themes of grief, displacement, animal threat & flashing animated images.
My Father and Qaddafi, Bluecoat (21 July)
UK Premiere. A daughter unravels the disappearance of her father, the peaceful opposition leader to Qaddafi, and pieces together her mother’s 19-year search to find him. Without any memory of her father, she tries to reconnect with him and reconcile with her Libyan identity.
The Book of Damascus, Bluecoat (23 July)
Join LAAF for a celebration of storytelling, writing, and critical thinking from the Syrian Capital, in association with Comma Press.
Damascus is a city of contradictions. Simultaneously the oldest city in the world, rich with Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic architecture, and one of the most modern and developed in the Middle East, it stands at a cross-roads between East and West, the past and the future, peace and war. The latest instalment in Comma’s ‘Reading the City’ series is filled with the perspectives of ordinary Syrians we never read about in the news – be they teenage boys scheming to raise funds for a longed-for Eid picnic; impoverished girls picking through rubbish dumps hoping to find gold, or more mystical characters like the mysterious guardians who watch over the seven planet-themed gates of the old town.
Tamsin Elliott (UK) and Tarek Elazhary – world premiere of Album 2, Philharmonic Music Room (24 July)
Liverpool Arab Arts Festival will present the world premiere performance of the hugely anticipated second album from Tamsin Elliott (UK) and Tarek Elazhary (Egypt).
Together, Tamsin and Tarek explore the intriguing parallels and idiosyncrasies of Egyptian Maqam and English folk traditions in a captivating fusion of songs, tunes and textures, to find commonality, foster cross-cultural connection and help to heal the scars of a colonial past through meaningful and conscious collaboration.
In conversation with Simona Abdallah: Finding Freedom Through Art, Rough Trade Liverpool (25 July)
Simona Abdallah will be welcomed to the city for an afternoon of thought-provoking conversation intertwined with Simona’s powerful performances on the darbuka, a hand-played traditional percussion instrument.
This will be followed by a night of exhilarating rhythms and mixes from Simona and two other powerful musicians of Arab heritage: Palestinian music producer, filmmaker and DJ, Hiba Salameh, and Jordanian sound artist, creative producer and DJ, Yasmeen Soudani (MUSYS).
The afternoon’s discussion will explore the patriarchal constraints that Simona faced in embracing the darbuka, her personal story in which her family attempted to force her into an array of marriages, and how she overcame those challenges to find freedom and success through her art.
The conversation will be hosted by Sara Suliman, a UK-based Sudanese filmmaker, Chevening scholar, researcher, producer, director and a member of the LAAF board of directors. The event will feature a welcome from Savera UK CEO & Founder, Afrah Qassim, conversation, live acoustic performances and a Q&A session.
LAAF Family Day, Sefton Park Palm House (26 July)
Taking place on the final day of the festival, the long-established LAAF Family Day is a celebratory showcase of Arab arts and culture.
Creating a moment of togetherness and community, Sefton Park’s Palm House will play host to a free afternoon of music, performance and authentic Arab culture, complemented by a range of stalls offering Arabic and Middle Eastern food, arts and crafts, traditional practices such as calligraphy and dance, as well as activities for children, including storytelling and workshops.
